Hospital Officials Asked About Trash on Beaches

By ROBERT HANLEY

Published: August 18, 1987

New Jersey officials questioned administrators at two hospitals yesterday, including one in New York City, as they tried to trace the origin of medical waste that washed onto some of the state's most popular beaches last week from a 50-mile-long garbage slick in the Atlantic.

The inquiries at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx and Horton Memorial Hospital in Middletown, N.Y., dealt with pieces of the debris found on Long Beach Island, a popular resort. The debris carried the names of the hospitals, officials said.

The questioning was part of a broader investigation begun yesterday involving the Federal Environmental Protection Agency, the Coast Guard, New Jersey authorities, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the New York City Department of Sanitation.

The agencies are trying to determine who collected the trash - a mix of hundreds of used syringes with needles, pill vials, pharmacists' bottles, unused hospital patient bracelets, and household garbage - and dumped it illegally somewhere off the New Jersey coast. Timbers and Planks Found

''We have no conclusions yet - we really don't even have many of the facts,'' said Thomas Cannon, a spokesman for the New Jersey Attorney General, W. Cary Edwards. ''It'll be a couple of days before we can nail it down.''

New Jersey officials believe that the medical waste was gathered in the New York City area and hauled offshore by barge. After officials from the various investigating agencies met in Trenton yesterday, speculation rose that the barge may have been purposely destroyed.

Wooden timbers and planks were found among the debris, and officials said intentional destruction of a barge was one possible explanation for their presence.

Garbage dumping at sea violates both Federal and New Jersey environmental laws. On Friday, when shoreline contamination was at its worst, Governor Kean threatened to file civil and criminal charges against those responsible for creating the slick. Hot Line Is Created

''The ocean is not a cesspool,'' he said.

Late yesterday, Mr. Edwards appealed for public help in the investigation and said a hot line - (609) 393-0853 - had been created for any information on medical debris found on the beaches with indentifiable addresses, names or markings.

The dumping coincides with a growing crisis over landfill space for household trash in the New York region and increasing anxieties over ocean pollution, particularly because of the unexplained deaths this summer of hundreds of bottle-nosed dolphins in the Atlantic from New Jersey to Virginia in recent weeks.

The dumping also points up the difficulties of regulating the disposal of potentially infectious or harmful medical and hospital wastes.

Since January 1986, trash generated at all hospitals in New York City is legally required to be incinerated, according to Elizabeth Sommers, vice president for regulatory and professional affairs of the Greater New York Hospital Association.

Ms. Sommers said there are two classifications for hospital trash in New York City and separate methods of disposing of each. So-called infectious or harmful waste, which includes needles and any materials used in treating or feeding infected patients, is removed under contract by private hauling companies regulated by the state Department of Environmental Conservation. It is burned at incinerators licensed by the department.

This trash is commonly known as ''red bag'' trash because hospitals store it in red plastic bags.

Hospital trash considered non-harmful includes office waste paper, trash from cafeterias, and such medical material as vials, pill bottles, patient identification bracelets and intravenous tubes. This trash is collected by the city and burned at a municipal incinerator.

One of the most puzzling aspects of the slick that washed ashore was that it contained both red bag waste and non-harmful trash, suggesting that the two categories were mingled before being taken to sea.

Albert Einstein College of Medicine was implicated by a 1-by-4 inch, blue plastic tag found amid debris Friday on Long Beach Island. It bore the center's name, according to Timothy Hilferty, the island's health officer.

''We don't know what the device had been attached to,'' Mr. Hilferty said.

Horton Memorial Hospital in Middletown was drawn into the inquiry by discovery of a postsurgical report on a Middletown woman, Mr. Hilferty said. It was on hospital stationery and dated June 9.

Spokesmen at both hospitals vowed full cooperation with the investigation and said they did not know how the items wound up in the slick.